Einstein Cross

Recently, astronomers have discovered a rare view of the “Einstein Cross”, predicted by Albert Einstein in 1915.

In this case, a foreground elliptical galaxy about 6 billion light-years away from Earth has distorted and split a beam of light from a background galaxy about 11 billion light-years away.

The result is a pattern of four blue spots surrounding the orange glow of the foreground galaxy.

The background light probably originates from a quasar, a young galaxy with a supermassive black hole at its core that emits intense radiation.

Einstein cross

• The Einstein cross is a special case of gravitational lensing. And gravitational lensing is a phenomenon.
• Under this, light shining from a greater distance is bent and pulled towards itself by the gravity of an object (such as a galaxy or a quasar) coming between its source and the observer. Because of this, distant galaxies appear brighter.
• In the case of the Einstein cross, the curvature of space-time around the object in front splits the light coming from behind it into four parts, like the points of a cross.
• Another case of gravitational lensing are Einstein rings. It occurs when two galaxies are behind each other in an almost perfectly straight line.
• Einstein’s theory of general relativity explains how massive objects bend space-time, and the strong gravity of the foreground galaxy bent the light from the quasars, creating the Einstein cross pattern.
• The greater the mass of an object, the greater the distortion it creates in space-time. Therefore, a star distorts space-time more than a planet and a black hole distorts it far more than a star.
• Sun, Earth and all other bodies produce the same curvature around them, due to which small bodies are attracted towards them. Extremely massive celestial objects also bend the path of light passing through them and act as gravitational lenses.

Source – Live Science 

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